It is taking the Cayman Islands Immigration Department up to six months to stamp the passports of Caymanian status or permanent residence holders if that person won their permission to remain in the territory following an appeal to the Immigration Appeals Tribunal (the “IAT”) court papers filed recently allege.
According to a judicial review application that was filed as a preemptory action, the applicants allege that the Immigration Department’s actions have amounted in some cases to an unlawful refusal to provide passport stamps to people who have legally obtained their immigration status.
The failure to provide appropriate recognition of their immigration status has had adverse consequences on the successful appellants in some instances and raise serious questions regarding the rights of persons under Cayman Islands law. The effects of the delays range from restricting a person’s ability to travel, maintaining or enabling employment for the successful applicant or their spouse, and even the denial of educational opportunities for the applicant’s dependent children. The judicial review application gives examples of several instances where inexplicable delays have occurred in the act of stamping the individual’s passport following appeals to the IAT.
In one matter, an applicant successfully appealed against the revocation of his Caymanian status, a local immigration status similar to citizenship. The decision was made by the appeals board on February 2017 but his legal advisers were told four days later that, even though the appeals tribunal re-awarded the man his legal status, the Immigration Department could not stamp his passport with the “right to be Caymanian” until it received an official letter from the IAT, which letter was not received until August 2017.
Another case involved the rejection of an applicant’s residency and employment rights certificate. This allows the non-Caymanian spouse of Caymanian to work in the islands. In August 2017, the IAT overturned that decision and awarded the employment certificate to the applicant. This was challenged by the Caymanian Status and Permanent Residency Board and in September 2017 they wrote to inform the man that his application for employment rights had been deferred. The applicant was subsequently issued the approval letter (albeit with typographical errors) in January 2018, a full five months after the IAT’s decision.
In these and other matters it was argued that the Immigration Department staff that acted improperly and unreasonably. As the issue of the letter is a mere formality and can take up to five months to be issued by some boards, a successful appellant can be left in limbo by bureaucratic delays and incompetence during that time.
